As with most direct-to-video movies, and also as with most things from the 1990's, this movie is a pile of crap and waste of time. What you get is a really stupid anthology movie version of THE TWILIGHT ZONE minus any kind of logical sense to anything that happens. In the world of this movie riding around on a bus causes strange things to happen to you. One guy gets a mold-man growing in his fridge, one lady gets a new boyfriend who turns out to be a robot and in the worst story some jackass winds up with a car that he can talk to. There's no clever twist-endings or anything, all this stuff is just put right out there from the beginning of the stories and I guess it's supposed to be interesting in some way. Stuff like this makes me wish this decade never existed. The only thing even slightly interesting about this is it's narrated by Mr. Roper from THREE'S COMPANY and I hope he got payed well for being involved in this snoozefest.
I can't imagine this DVD has been sold anywhere ever for more than $1:
Probably most well known for almost being banned in Japan upon it's original release because the makeup FX reminded people of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This Japanese monster flick, Directed by Ishiro Honda, who also did GODZILLA, is sort of a monster movie version of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND except these seven stranded castaways run into mutated mushroom people and then they themselves become part of the walking fungi gang after eating some magical shrooms. For a good 3/4's of this movie you get nothing but talking heads which is kinda disappointing since I've heard a lot of positive things about this one. I guess they were going for a more serious approach than a fun monster bash and in that way it works OK but it's also a pretty dull ride. I've only seen the dubbed American release and apparently the original version, titled MATANGO, works a lot better in creating the bleak portrait the director intended. I'm sure it might also work best if you were a Japanese person who recalled having your country destroyed by radioactive clouds that resembled giant mushrooms. AKA FUNGUS OF TERROR
By this 5th film in the GAMERA series the template was set, you get annoying little kids(strangely one here is a little American kid), a bizarre monster for our heroic defender of children to fight, evil aliens and horrendous dubbing for the English version. This movie might have the worst dubbing ever in the history of anything except for maybe some cheapshit kung fu flick but that would be a close call. Everyone here talks in a stilted cartoon voice that just adds to the overall idiocy. In addition to the typical monster movie hijinks you get monster gore in this complete with purple blood as our villain monster, Guiron, has a huge Ginzu knife for a head and decapitates and chops up fellow monsters into giant-sized steaks. He also inexplicably shoots ninja starts out of his big knife-head which leads to some green turtle blood. Also you get to see a giant turtle do gymnastics and go-go dance which I think is a pretty unique thing. I'll give this movie extra points for total absurdity because if you're gonna be dumb at least try to be the dumbest. This was released in a cut version by AIP as ATTACK OF THE MONSTERS and released in Germany as KING KONG VS. GODZILLA which makes no sense since neither of those monsters show up here.
Starting with ZOMBIE Lucio Fulci made some of the best and most most gory Eurotrash films of the 80's which makes him a noteworthy director in any sleazy movie fans book. Unfortunately before that era he made a few giallos including this one and I'm not really a big fan of them in general. DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING is the best of the bunch and worth seeing but this here and A LIZARD IN A WOMEN'S SKIN I find to be pretty weak all around from the convoluted plots to the stupid twist endings. There's really no comparison between his mediocre stuff and the real masters of this genre(Bava & Argento) and I can't help but feel I could be spending my time watching something made with some real artistic style and not a more typical hack job of a film. This particular film is barely even a giallo with only one murder and not much in the way of violence. It's more of your standard mystery and that's never as exciting for me personally. On the plus side you do get some nudity here with 60's strippers and implied lesbianism so at least there's something to look at before you zone out from boredom with the nonsensical storyline. AKA ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER
Probably more interesting as a historical footnote than an entertaining film, this is the movie most film experts point to as having started the giallo sub-genre of Italian films. Since this is the first and it's the early 60's we don't get a lot of the staples of the later more slasher-movie type of films. There's nothing at all graphic here and it's really a more straightforward mystery/thriller than a horror film. It also feels a whole lot like director Mario Bava is more interested in imitating Alfred Hitchcock's style than mastering his own which he would go on to do with his more gothic flicks made around this same time. It is an interesting starting point though and worth a watch. Probably more fun for fans of Hitchcock suspense tales or anyone that wants to see a young John Saxon in action. This was retitled THE EVIL EYE by AIP in America and they tried to play up a supernatural angle which doesn't really exist in the film.
This movie starts right out with a bang as a bunch of no-good, sandal-wearing, pinball-playing, drunken students rape and kill their teacher, unfortunately after that we settle into the old police-procedural mode for most of the rest of the film. It's too bad such an exploitative title is wasted on something like this. It's also hard to believe the director of MILANO CALIBRO 9 and TO BE TWENTY..., Fernando Di Leo, is the same guy that made this boring crime/mystery flick. Almost everything about this movie is crappy right down to the shaky camera work. There is one interesting scene where we flashback to the initial rape/murder that's done super stylishly with some intense sounds and visuals but besides that it's a pretty dull nap-inducing ride. Lots of things that might have been interesting to actually see happen are just talked about which I guess saves money but doesn't make for anything worth viewing. I guess I can sorta forgive Di Leo since this was one of his earlier films and he does seem to predict the often used giallo twist ending with his own gender-bending villain(although this climax was a bit perplexing the way it's revealed here, then again it may just have been that I was dozing-off from lack of interest). I would say stick with Di Leo's 70's crime stuff for more interesting cinema.
Probably the most interesting thing about this early 70's Swedish porn is that there's a gay scene where a lady pays this gigolo to seduce her husband, besides that it's just people cheating on their spouses which I suppose was a lot more shocking back when this was initially shown. Apparently this film won some adult film award when it was released at an Amsterdam film festival but I can't imagine there was too much competition at the time because there's really not much of an interesting plot or anything just some male hookers paid to bang guys wives so they can take photos and blackmail them. The scratchy, fuzzy print of this that I've seen, which in some spots looks like it was pulled out of a dumpster, is only a little over an hour long so I'm guessing there's gotta be a longer cut out there somewhere. AKA ADULTERY: A NEW CONCEPT
This chick, Mimi Morgan, is making a porn flick and then has a bunch of flashbacks to her crappy relationship with Joey Silvera. They fight and then become swingers and then she ends up becoming a porn star which we already knew at the beginning of the movie. There's a silly ass-whipping scene and a part where Silvera forces Morgan into a threesome by jamming a huge needle full of some type of persuasive lesbian-inducing drug up her ass. Besides these two scenes it's pretty generic stuff although the print I've seen of this is missing the ending so maybe something amazing happens in the last reel that I missed but I kinda doubt it. Also the lady on that DVD case looks like nobody in this film.
If you want to see a crappy soft-core version of this flick with no ending along with some bizarre cartoons it's on the Uncle Farts Collection:
This movie is a a big meandering mess. We follow around some boring nurses who have an annoying landlord who can't get a hard-on and that's the man story. There's some social commentary about Vietnam, pollution and racism but it's all so dull and slow-moving that it's hard to stay interested in any of these things while viewing. I think the only memorable part for me was when they go see a rock show and the band plays a song about oral sex. I will say after viewing this it made me appreciate it's precursor STUDENT NURSES a lot more even though this one technically has more boobs, and an actual rape scene, it's just not a very interesting watch. I only have 3 more nurse movies in this Roger Corman DVD box set, hopefully they get better.
This is a documentary about Italy's great horror master made by British TV and works as a cool greatest hits type of package with scenes from his earliest films all the way up to the 90's(which is right were his movies started to go downhill). There was a better earlier doc from 1985 called DARIO ARGENTO'S WORLD OF HORROR which went a lot more in depth into the man behind the camera and his influences but that one was an actual full-length movie whereas this one is just an hour long TV special so I guess that's understandable. Either way it's too bad stuff like this would never play on American airwaves for oversensitive types to complain about.
I first saw this movie on VHS as HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN and can't say I was very impressed by it. Someone had the brilliant idea to cut out the sexier bits from that release. Viewing it on DVD as BLUE EYES... is a very different experience. This uncut version has a lot more going for it. It basically plays out like a Spanish version of an Italian giallo movie including the standard black-gloved killer and gruesome death scenes. Necks are sliced and eyes are cut out all in super bright 70's blood color. The main highlight of this flick, as with many giallos, is it's crazy ending which, since I'm not a complete douche-bag, I will not spoil except to say it has something to do with blue eyes and broken dolls. Paul Naschy stars here in a role which is slightly different than his usual Wolfman one but he still manages to screw most of the female cast and kick some ass along the way. A good entry in the genre of Spanish horror.
This film starts out with an attempted rape which gave me some hope for a sexy thriller type situation but then it quickly becomes very soap opera-ish as it's more concerned with who's sleeping with who and that sort of thing. At least it's a soap-opera with some boobs thrown in. There's also a lot of hippie stuff going on including revolutionary Mexicans who have shootouts with the police, naked acid-trips on the beach and a bunch of bad folk music. Strangely for a movie marketed as a sex flick there's long stretches of time where nothing very sexy happens. This was the first film released by Roger Corman's New World Pictures company so I guess it has some historical significance for that, plus it kicked off a whole shitload of similarly titled sexy nurse films but beyond that there's not much that's notable about this one.
This early Vincent Price horror/crime flick came out after his big hit HOUSE OF WAX and shares a few elements with that film. Both star Price as a murderous fellow(in this he makes masks instead of wax figures) and both were shot in 3D so you get a yo-yo, a saw blade and some water thrown right in your stupid face. Eva Gabor from GREEN ACRES shows up as Price's ex-wife and gets strangled. There's also a beheading by saw and a guy burned alive but nothing graphic is shown since this is the 50's. A pretty basic(and recycled) storyline but still an entertaining watch mostly just due to Price's charisma.
THE DEVILS is the point where the art-flick meets nunsploitation. It's also a sort-of bigger budgeted version of MARK OF THE DEVIL and uses it's larger scale to great effect. The story itself deals with the ideas of religious insanity and more so with the inevitability of those in power to abuse their authority for whatever purposes benefit them. I'm sure this film was quite shocking to anyone lucky enough to view it back when it was released, though because it was censored so heavily by the powers that be at the time I'm not sure too many people got the chance to view the version director Ken Russell intended. This is a shame because this film does a beautiful job of depicting the evil insanity of organized mob-mentality i.e. church-mind. The most censored scene contains a group of nuns accused of demonic possession raping a statue of Jesus and if there ever was a more fitting depiction of the absurdity of religion put on film I'm not sure what it would be. You also get some more typical inquisition-style torture and naughty nun orgies. Probably the best made movie in this blasphemous sub-genre and really deserves a nice Criterion release at some point.
This time out Paul Naschy aka Waldemar Daninsky aka El Hombre Lobo ends up in Tibet where some Abominable Snowman action is going down. We don't get to the titular match up until the very final reel but this is still a pretty neat adventure with Spain's #1 Wolfman. Most of the movie deals with Naschy's quest to find the elusive Yeti monster. He runs into some naked cannibal cave-chicks who he has sex with, of course since no one can resist Naschy when he takes off his shirt, and then gets bitten by them cursing him with his werewolf problem. I'm not exactly clear on how naked cannibal ladies pass on the Wolfman gene but whatever. Naschy's Wolfman is mostly portrayed as a good guy here since he breaks up a rape and kills lots of bad guys. The bad guys are soldiers of evil warlord Sekkar Khan which of course reminds us all of this horrible 80's hit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XV5_WagxZg. Khan also has an evil sorceress hench-lady who enjoys torturing prison girls and ripping their skin off in her spare time. This film covers all the bases with boobs, blood and beasts and is an enjoyable view for Eurotrash or monster-mash lovers. Also I think it might be the only werewolf movie in history to end on an upbeat note. AKA NIGHT OF THE HOWLING BEAST
The Godfather of Gore, H.G. Lewis, apparently directed this weird, incest-filled, sex flick under an alias. Also all the actors are disguised with French names(I guess French movies were considered more risque at this time). This is a strange throwback to Lewis' earlier nudie-cutie type films except this one features a supposedly under-aged schoolgirl who bangs her cousin and gets off spying on her parents having sex. Later on she ends up sleeping with the same guy her mom is cheating on her dad with. "Let's keep it all in the family" seems to be the quote to remember when it comes to this one. There's also a really stupefyingly dumb speech delivered by our slutty teen. The whole thing is pretty perverted if you think about it too much but it's all played out pretty light-hearted and goofy(even the abortion sequence) and I think they were attempting to make this a comedy of some sort and of course they attempt to shoe-horn a twisted moral lesson in there and are unsuccessful at both goals.
A good time only for fans of giant 60's panties and naked gals with beehive hairdos.
The first of 9 Johnny Wadd porn films directed by Bob Chinn and starring John Holmes as a detective who's constantly getting laid. It's also the movie that gave him his famous nickname. There's not much of a story to this one, just a slight wraparound bit where Wadd is looking for a missing girl. Most of the 60 minutes or so take place in one room where Holmes bangs a couple of different girls. One odd scene has Wadd use a Dr, Pepper bottle as a dildo on an older mom-looking lady.
More of an historical curiosity than anything of any quality. There's way better porn from this era that you should watch before this. Also this made me want to watch a spaghetti-western since there's constant unauthorized use of the soundtrack from THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY throughout the run-time.
Most of the early GAMERA movies are like retarded versions of GODZILLA movies and this one might be one of the stupidest. It's kinda hard to say for sure though because they're all pretty dumb. In this one we get a couple of annoying kids, stupid aliens and stupid Japanese people who all make bad decisions. Gamera's foe here is a giant shark-monster who spends most of his time in water but whenever it's convenient gains the ability to walk around on two feet on land. In probably the dumbest scene our big turtle hero plays out a tune using Zigra's spiny backside as a xylophone right in the middle of a fight to save the Earth and of course he also has to dance a little jig afterwards to celebrate. There's also some green giant turtle blood to spice things up, a fairly hot Japanese lady villain, Gamera's SESAME STREET-ish theme song and a silly anti-pollution message included. This is probably way too silly for most adult humans but it does make for a good episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 which might be the only way to watch it without your brains falling out of your head.
This little farm boy kills his dad by running him over with a tractor then the stupid shit falls and manages to run over one of his own hands. This is all before the excellent title shows up. From there on out we get a tale of a whack-job with a hook for a hand and a Norman Bates-like obsession with his mommy that goes about offing anyone who mildly displeases his worldview. Strangely most of these murders don't employ the use of his pirate hand but luckily for us there is some axe and meat-cleaver swinging to make up for that. The first half of this flick plays like a 70's version of a slasher movie and then things shift when our protagonist kidnaps a hooker and it becomes a hostage movie for the second half. Angus Scrimm from PHANTASM shows up here as a nosy doctor in a small bit part and he's the only face I recognized in this whole thing. Things finally culminate in a crazy freak-out of an ending where some ghostly apparitions that look like they popped out of EVIL DEAD show up.
This is worth checking out if you dig proto-slasher flicks or just bloody off-kilter tales of murder and mayhem even if the movie is fairly simplistic and meanders here and there. It's available on a few of those cheap-ass multi-pack horror DVD sets so it's real easy to find. AKA CLAW OF TERROR & MATTHEW
Also re-released a year later as THE CAPTIVE FEMALE playing up the hostage angle:
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At the bottom of a double-bill with this Paul Naschy flick(aka THE HANGING WOMAN):
Having seen BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA VIXENS before, this movie here looks like basically a more straight-forward version of that movie and it looks like it was shot in the same locations with the same music and really only lacks the crazy narration of BENEATH. Then again many of Russ Meyers movies share similar themes and giant breasted actresses so this isn't all that shocking. The one character here that stands out in a unique way is a cop played by Charles Napier who seems to have a problem getting it up for the ladies but has no problem stomping women into a bloody pulp if they make fun of his flaccid dong. It's by far my favorite of Napier's performances and shows him at his nuttiest best. It also seems completely out of left field that we get a psychopathic killer in the middle of a movie like this but OK. So we get extreme violence against women added to Meyers' usual objectified women portrayed as simplistic sex maniacs and this obviously might not be for everyone but I found it a fun ride through 70's misogyny-land and after all it's really only a spoof. Personally I think I like this flick a little more than BENEATH just because it's more coherent and less insanely frenetic as his latter opus. Haji from FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL, KILL also shows up for a bit which is always good to see.
Riccardo Freda is a director whose early work in the 60's is very similar to Mario Bava's gothic movies and is some really good stylized stuff. Those were his only films I was familiar with before seeing this one. This film carries that gothic feeling into the giallo territory and throws some blood and boobs into the mix for good measure. This movie as a whole feels like it has all the elements to have been a really good thriller but it seems very disjointed and all over the place. It's part ghost story, part gory murder mystery, part Satanic ritual flick and it all doesn't really gel into anything spectacular. There's also one really odd bit where a mannequin gets it's brains smashed out by an axe which comes out of nowhere and leaves you scratching your head. There's also a giant plastic-looking spider and some crud-faced nuns running around in what I think were dream sequences. Laura Gemser also shows up but she looks slightly chubbier than in her 70's EMANUELLE flicks so I wasn't even sure if it was her at first.
A bit of a confusing mess that isn't for anyone except hardcore giallo/strange movie aficionados. This has a whole slew of aliases including DELIRIUM, FEAR, THE WAILING, MURDER SYNDROME, UNCONCIOUS and SATAN'S ALTAR to name a few.
Everything about this movie feels a little bit off. The pacing is strange, the acting ranges from adequate to terrible, the plot meanders all over the place and the tone shifts from farcical comedy to drama. This might be one of the few "Warhol" movies that actual had some input from Mr. Warhol and it definitely feels like it. When I first watched this I thought Warhol's regular leading man Joe Dallesandro was the star here but apparently it's Mr. Norris from CLASS OF 1984 looking quite buff. There is a strong John Waters feel to a few scenes, including a baby getting tossed out a window and splattering on the street and anytime a fat lady named Estelle is onscreen. In fact Estelle's scenes of hatred-spewing towards her dog-loving neighbor, played by Lawrence Tierney, were the big high-points for me. The low-points were whenever Susan Tyrrell was onscreen. I'm not sure if her character was supposed to be severely mentally handicapped or just really stupid but every scene with her and her gigantic-headed baby is filled with enough schmaltzy pathos that I wanted to chuck a baby into a sidewalk.
Maybe worth a look if you're a fan of the odd and offbeat but I'd go with early Waters over this anyday.
Fabrizio De Angelis is a guy who's name I recognize mostly as a producer on lots of 70's Italian movies and pretty much every one of the Lucio Fulci gore flicks. I guess at some point in the he just decided to start directing wacky cult films himself. This movie here he directs under his most common alias of Larry Ludman and it's your basic JAWS rip-off with a crocodile substituted for a shark. While this movie is pretty standard and what you would expect, right down to the familiar musical score, it is a fun watch with some insane action and also very dumb action sequences. The highlight of this is when our Quint stand-in, named Joe, decides the best way to harpoon a gigantic croc is to jump on it's back and ride it like a surfboard while attempting to stab it. That will give you an idea of the not-so highbrow ideas we're dealing with here. There's also a lot of explosions which seem to happen for no logical reason. Also the ridiculous mechanical monster moves so slow that I can't imagine how anyone would ever get eaten by it. It's still looks better than any CGI-shit effect though. Check it out if you feel like shutting your brain off and catching some stupid, bloody, limb-chomping, Italian animal gone nutty goofiness.
There is a reportedly extra shitty sequel that came out in 1990.
This sequel to the classic Sonny Chiba STREET FIGHTER is a worthy follow-up to that violence-filled kung fu flick. In this one you get throats ripped out with fingers, a guy punched in the back of the head so hard that both his eyeballs pop out of their sockets, a guy karate chopped so hard in the head that a river of blood pours down on him and more assorted bone breaking. Chiba also gets a goofy sorta hippie-ish female sidekick which is weird and there's a little nudity thrown in for added quality. While maybe a slight bit below the original in terms of crazy bloodshed it's still worth a look for fans. And as a plus it seems to be in the public domain so you can find it everywhere for super cheap. Stay away from the 3rd movie though since it went really far downhill with that one.
This sequel to the great Italian post-nuke flick 1990: BRONX WARRIORS has Mark Gregory return as Trash, our gang-leading, anti-corporate rebel(I believe they would call him a terrorist today). He's joined by that kinda dull guy who starred in THE NEW BARBARIANS and a gang leader who wears a pirate shirt. The bad guys in this(aka corporate America) have Henry Silva on their side in a pretty bad-ass role as a guy who will pretty much kill anyone if it benefits him in some way.
It's kind of funny how certain aspects of this movie mirror the whole cleaning-up of New York that happened throughout the 90's and on into today by soulless politicians and evil companies(ie Disney etc.). It's almost like director Enzo G. Castellari accidentally predicted the future of the city, minus the flamethrowers used on citizens in the streets, and made a silly action movie out of it all.
Also the theme song for this sounds like a variation on Sonny Chiba's STREET FIGHTER theme which is cool. AKA BRONX WARRIORS 2 and ESCAPE 2000
This is a TV movie that was definitely my favorite as a young fella. It's about a gang of cave-dwelling monsters that are sent by Satan to overthrow humanity. The thing I loved about this one back then is that, unlike many made-for-TV flicks from that time, it showed the monsters in all their rubber-suited glory right out in the open. This was very exciting for a 7 year old me and obviously I haven't matured all that much since then. There's also a bit of blood here and there which was unusual for prime-time TV. The only thing missing is some sweet 70's boobs and you wouldn't be able to tell this from many of the R-rated films from that era. Bernie Casey, of DR. BLACK AND MR. HYDE fame, does an awesome job as our head gargoyle and I think this might be the only non-blaxploitation film I've ever seen him in.
Worth checking out for people who can appreciate how TV movies were once just about equal in quality to theatrical stuff(then again most theatrical movies were better back then also so I guess it all equals out).
They left the ending open for a sequel or maybe even a TV series of some sort but as far as I know that never happened.
"The world is full of puke and shit, and now a horde of tin-masked assholes are puking in our faces, full of shit."
The first two VIOLENT SHIT movies were basic straight ahead extremely gory slasher movies made in Germany on what look like very tiny budgets. In this one, which is the highlight of the trilogy for me, we get an action movie shoe-horned in along with the uber-gore. None of these 3 entertainingly dumb movies are related plot-wise except that they all feature a killer named Karl, played by director Andreas Schnaas, who wears a cheap-shit homemade metal mask and loves tearing people apart. In this one he's Karl Jr., which makes me think of that fast-food burger place, and he brings his dad along for some bloody good times. Somehow here Karl and son have started a militia full of maniacs and murderers on an island where they spend their time ripping out people's guts and tearing faces off traitors. It's all fun and games until some shipwrecked knuckleheads show up and then some kung fu fighters join up with them and then the shit is on! As you can probably tell if you've seen any of these movies the story is a jumbled mess that's all over the place but that's part of the chaotic fun of this film. On the action side you get ninjas, zombies, a half-robot man, a killer action-figure, and use of just about every weapon known to man including the incredible flying-guillotine. On the violence side you get a zombie-building mad scientist with a Hitler moustache, tons of decapitations, fingers, legs and just about every body part you can think of hacked off, boob biting, a guy gets his spinal column ripped out of his asshole with a hook and on and on. As an added bonus this film may have the most absurd dubbing and/or subtitling(depending on which version you watch) of anything ever with insults like "donkey fucking whores" and "fucktard" thrown about liberally.
Seeing this movie in a theater full of drunken loudmouths last night was probably the best way to view such a masterpiece of Eurotrash splatter cinema. AKA ZOMBIE DOOM
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